What Building an eCommerce Category Taught Me About Growth
I entered the eCommerce industry in my country fairly early. At the time, there was only one local marketplace platform big enough and liquid enough to compete with established brick-and-mortar department stores. When I joined in 2014, the platform itself had only existed for about three years.
The idea of eCommerce had been around for a while, but the ecosystem was still immature. Data was thin, benchmarks were unreliable, and things changed quickly. Coming from a more established corporate environment where Six Sigma concepts were drilled into my brain, it felt like chaos personified.
Targets existed, of course. NMV, assortment growth, partnerships, merchant count. The usual suspects. What didn’t exist was a clear answer to a very basic question: Which direction are we actually trying to grow in?
So the guidance was simple and vague at the same time. Make big bets on things you believe will move the category, then do everything you can to make them work. Not exactly comforting, but that was the reality of a new industry.
When there’s no playbook, growth starts with choices
I was mentored by one of the best regional category managers I’ve worked with. Together, we focused on four areas to grow the category in a way that made sense for both the platform and its audience: assortment, internal coordination, website optimization, and having the right people in the right roles.
These weren’t random activities added to a very long to-do list. They were deliberate choices about what kind of category we wanted to build.
Assortment is not about adding more products
The first lever was assortment mix. Not in the “let’s add more SKUs” sense, but in deciding who the category was really for.
For unbranded or generic bestsellers, we ensured multiple merchants could supply the same items. This kept competition healthy and prices reasonable. At the same time, we partnered with household brands to give consumers confidence and choice.
The goal wasn’t to please everyone. It was to offer enough variety across different purchasing power levels, budget-conscious, mid-tier, more affluent, without losing coherence. The right mix depends heavily on the audience you already have and the trajectory you want the category to take.
That part tends to get overlooked when people talk about “growth.”
Execution only works when teams are aligned to the same direction
Once you have products, they still need to reach the right people. This is where coordination becomes critical.
Marketing wasn’t just about running campaigns. It meant understanding how products would surface to customers through thematic pushes, flash sales, pilot initiatives, and paid placements. It also meant occasionally volunteering the category to test new marketing ideas, even when the results were uncertain.
Content mattered a lot. Back then, eCommerce didn’t have the advantage of physical stores or in-store promoters. Product pages had to do the heavy lifting. High-quality images, clear value propositions, and properly written product details made the difference between traffic and actual conversion. Selling via TikTok has changed things since then, but that is a separate conversation.
Operations completed the loop. Fulfillment was not just a backend concern. It directly affected customer experience. That meant understanding merchant operations, recommending the right fulfillment options, and working within platform constraints. Keeping merchants profitable, customers satisfied, and the platform sustainable required constant trade-offs.
None of this worked in isolation. Each function only mattered because it was moving in the same direction.
Running a category feels like running a small business
As the category grew, it became clear that managing it felt like running a mini-business using someone else’s infrastructure.
There were customers to understand, economics to manage, systems to coordinate, and decisions to make daily. Growth did not come from doing more things. It came from making consistent decisions that aligned with the direction we had chosen.
And as complexity increased, the need for people increased too.
People don’t create direction, they scale it
The bigger the category became, the more execution was required. With very little time for training and a constant sense that everything was needed yesterday, hiring people with the right skills for specific roles became necessary.
What made it work was not the job titles. It was the context.
People could think independently because the parameters were clear. They could make small decisions without checking every detail because priorities were understood. They were not guessing what mattered.
This is where many growing businesses struggle.
They hire people hoping the role itself will bring clarity. In practice, clarity has to exist first.
Growth is not about doing more
Category growth, at least in my experience, is not about piling on initiatives or hiring faster. It is about deciding where you want to go, building systems around that direction, and letting execution scale from there.
Once direction is clear, execution becomes scalable.
Only then do people, roles, and hiring start to make sense.
Without that foundation, growth feels chaotic, hiring feels disappointing, and progress feels harder than it needs to be.
And that lesson applies well beyond eCommerce categories.
